The Place On Earth Where The Sun Is Rectangular

2018

 

I

Imagine a darkness.

A place on earth where it is terribly cold.

Imagine you are isolated on an island with nowhere to go.

A place so far north that the sun does not appear over the horizon until late March.

Imagine you are stuck here for a long period, three months or so.

Now imagine that all your instruments for measuring time and your geographical position have been corrupted.

Let’s add a severely rationed diet into the mix.

Imagine you will be awaiting the returning of the sun with great despair.

After all these months, under inhuman conditions, the day finally comes that you see light shimmering through the cracks in your cabin.

Picture you running outside.

At this precise moment what you see is a glowing rectangle floating above the horizon.

Would you believe that what you see is true?

 

II

Imagine you are blind.

You have never seen a sun before.

Imagine you have only heard stories around you of people talking about this mighty phenomenon.

Also, in every text you touch, almost in every word, you encounter the character for the sun.

Imagine that in a haze of curiosity you set off to get a better understanding of this sun.

You come across a person and you kindly ask him what the sun looks like.

He will answer you by saying,

“the sun is like a Gong, in its roundness and shininess”.

From now on, every time you hear a gong sounding in the streets indicating the time, in your understanding it will be the sun.

Now you stumble upon a person who tells you the sun can be understood as a candle in all its glowing light and warmth.

From now on, every time you touch your flute, you will think about the shape of the candle, thinking you’re holding the sun.

How would you know when to trust your newly formed concept of the sun?

 

III

Imagine a rectangle.

It was once a circle.

Imagine the shapes that lie between the two.

It’s easy to imagine the instrument needed to draw a circle: a simple compass will do.

With a natural motion and elegance it will create a perfect circle, leaving only a small trace in the centre.

Picture humans nomadically roaming the earth, going wherever the food would bring them, and picture the circular footprints their tents left.

Although the tool itself is far more simple in form – a simple straight edge will do – the actions to draw a rectangle are far more intricate.

Only four lines; one also needs to take into account that these lines need to be exactly perpendicular to one another.

Picture humans gaining control over their food, settling down, and picture the footprint of their housing suddenly turned into rectangular shapes.

Can you conceive of the shapes that lie in between the circle and the rectangle?

Can you picture the instrument needed to draw these?

 

 

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The Place On Earth Where The Sun Is Rectangular

Publication

2018

 

This small leparello format publication  is partly a formal study to the transitional geometrical shape of the sun. The images overlay, intersect and interact depending on how the viewer browses through the booklet. On further inspection of the black solids, another layer becomes visible only when seen through a magnifier; the printed grid slowly transforms from being round to being square.  Complementary by three short thought-experiments the reader is challenged  to  re-evaluate their conception of the sun.

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